Approach

Passion
The practice has a passion to create places that give inspiration and enjoyment to the people that use them, but at the same time are legible and satisfy all the functional requirements. To us there is no standard project – we strive to innovate in every scheme to take it beyond the ordinary, and are happy to champion that process.

Process
We believe that good design comes out of in depth analysis of both the site and the intended user. This approach reveals opportunities that we take forward into a creative framework, and allows us to constantly make connections between people and places.

Collaboration
All of our projects involve collaboration – with clients, architects, engineers, artists, the end user, and we believe that schemes benefit from this multi-faceted approach.

Sustainability
Taking care of the environment pervades all our designs, and is expressed in the way we design for biodiversity, water management, and use of resources.

Services
Core skills centre on landscape architecture, urban design and master-planning with expertise in public art, and public participation. We design both exterior and interior landscapes and offer arboricultural and ecological surveys with assessment for Code and BREEAM. In this small focused practice, Philip Cave is fully involved in every project.

Initially trained as a landscape architect, Philip later broadened his expertise to include urban design, community art and public participation. He has been principal of Philip Cave Associates for the last 25 years and previous to that worked for an architectural practice, city and county councils.

Philip has been a member of various Design Review Panels over the last 8 years – initially for Southwark and now for Newham, Tfl/GLA, South and East Region, and Islington. He has been on the Urban Design Group Executive Committee for the last 25 years, and been a tutor and lecturer at a number of universities.

His main passion is in designing inspirational public realm and semi private schemes both for private developers and local authorities. Most of his current projects are in the UK but past schemes have been in UAE, Hong Kong and Saudi Arabia. One of his inspirations is Japanese gardens after studying and working in Japan and writing the book ‘Creating Japanese Gardens’ published in UK and USA.

He has won a number of awards including from the Civic Trust, Landscape Institute, BALI, Property Papers/Journals, and Local Authorities